


Romantic Task Force

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [17]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-12 10:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10489338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Nothing gets past Crowe Altius.





	1. reconnaisance

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/157750882337/im-sorry-if-this-has-been-prompted-before-but) for [r3zuri](https://r3zuri.tumblr.com/).

Nobody knew… but _everyone_ knew.

Everyone who had known Nyx Ulric for more than three minutes, anyway.

Nothing got past Crowe. _Jack shit_ got past Crowe. She knew where all the bodies were buried… most likely because she was the one that buried them. She had a poker face that could strip the King of Lucis of the entire royal vault and pay back all of its debt in one go. There was no telling what she did and did not know until she divulged that information herself.

Locking her lips shut to the discovery that Nyx was banging King Junior was a challenge that even she had difficulty rising to. Oh, but she _had_ to. She wanted to sit on this for as long as possible. The look on that undercut son of a bitch’s face when she dropped it was going to be far too worth it.

Besides the sadistic glee from torturing her friend would eventually bring her, the time she took getting to that point allowed her to consider the reality of it.

It was stupid. It was _really fucking stupid._ Nyx could be a bit of hard-head, but he was by no means dumb. Which was why it had surprised her so much when she’d been passing by that fateful supply closet one evening and heard the mutually breathy moans of “Nyx” and “ _Noct_ ” from behind it. She’d clapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming “what the _fuck_ ” before whipping around and scurrying the other way.

Her emergency bottle of tequila was her best friend for the rest of that night.

Keeping herself from staring at Nyx and from barking a “what are you _thinking_ ” at him in the middle of the mess hall the next day was absolute _agony_. Because what _was_ he thinking? Breaking the rules was one thing – it was a very funny thing when it was at Commander Drautos’s expense, and they could bet money on how long it would take before Nyx could give him an aneurism.

Breaking the one rule to rule them all was entirely another potentially _deadly,_ really _bad_ thing. Ain’t nothin’ was gonna be funny about cruising beneath the Citadel gates to Nyx’s decapitated head screaming down at her every morning.

Was he on a suicide mission? Did something happen, should she be concerned, should she book him a session with a therapist, have him committed? Because she was pretty sure this qualified as being a danger to oneself.

Watching Nyx as to clues behind his madness yielded… interesting results? First of all, he was great at hiding it, she had to give him props for that. She had to straight up stealth game his ass while off-duty if she was ever going to see him and Noctis within twenty feet of each other. And when she did, holy _crap_ , was it a bitch to get a good view. They’d gotten good at hiding, good at staying quiet, and good at acting, pretending at crossing each other’s paths to go over a training regimen or confirm security circuits or any mundane Citadel procedure stuff.

(Once she’d, quite literally, gotten stuck between a rock and a hard place while they were going at it in the glaive’s training yard well past midnight. She’d shoved in her headphones and pushed King’s Knight so close to her face until it was over that she thought she’d given herself permanent eye damage.)

And yet, for all of his insanity, Nyx continued to be his particular brand of normal… Wasn’t that how serial killers worked? You’d never know they were nuts until you were stuffed in their freezer? Keeping this secret was starting to make her a little batty if that was the first analogy that wormed its way into her brain. So, when Libertus sidled up to her side while she was staring at Nyx across the training yard, trying so, _so_ hard not to see who he’d just been doing against that big rock the night before, she knew she had to share the crazy.

“Does he seem a little different to you?” Libertus mumbled out of the side of his mouth. “He’s usually not this happy unless he’s gotten laid.”

Crowe scrutinized the reckless abandon with which Nyx warp-raced Pelna around the yard, listening to the wild bark of his laugh when he won. She actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten laid enough to draw a comparison.

“I think he’s got someone, but I cannot for the life of me figure out who it is,” Libertus grumbled.

He started draining a water bottle as Crowe switched her stare to him. She watched him for a long moment, before turning back to the view and just saying, “It’s Noctis.”

She should have filmed that water-spout.

Sharing the struggle with Libertus proved to take more of a toll on him than she had anticipated. Nyx could tell something was off, she could see it in the slant of his eyes every time he walked up to his friend and Libertus started sweating, giving him curt, one-worded replies as if he were an enemy of the state rather than his childhood friend. Luckily, that was the only person he had trouble keeping it from.

The intervention came about over drinking their despairs for their soon-to-be-deceased comrade down in the Galahdian bar one night.

“This is a problem, right?” Libertus had mumbled into his half-empty beer. “He has a goddamn _problem_.”

Which is when Crowe slapped down a tip on the table, grabbed her coat, and dragged Libertus half-drunk through the streets of Insomnia to pound at Nyx’s door at 1:30 AM on a Wednesday.

“This is an intervention,” she said to him as he answered the door, half-asleep and barely functioning enough not to object as the two of them barreled their way into his apartment.

“Okay,” he just mumbled, identifying the smell of beer and Galahdian cooking on them right away. Couldn’t really argue with either of them when they were like this.

They stood in the middle of his apartment, Crowe with her arms crossed over her chest and Libertus belatedly mimicking the posture. It made him look more like a mime than a partner in crime. Nyx resigned himself to the couch, yawning through the lost sleep they’d just taken away from him.

“It’s about Noctis,” Crowe said, bluntly dumping it over him like an ice-cold bucket of water.

“Man, there’s like a thousand people in this city. Of all of them, you couldn’t go for the one that _isn’t_ going to get you executed for treason?”

Libertus got whiney when he’d been drinking. His arms slumped to his sides and he moaned the words at him like a child being denied an extra cookie for dessert. Crowe was a scary drunk because you couldn’t tell if she was. Still, that didn’t stop him from stating the obvious to try covering his tracks.

“You’re drunk.”

“And you’re crazy,” Crowe snapped. “Dude, if people find out…”

“People _aren’t_ going to find out. Right?”

Nyx rose to his feet, openly confessing and probably hoping they were going to be too hungover to remember it in the morning. He was a bigger fool than Crowe had realized during this whole tryst.

“I don’t know how you two found out…”

“She did it.”

Libertus jerked a thumb over at her and, you know what? Crowe was happy to take the blame. Who the hell else was going to call him out on his bullshit? She wasn’t quite sure anymore if she was mad about his choice in boyfriend, or if she was mad that he felt he couldn’t trust his best friends with the name of said boyfriend… Assuming they even were boyfriends, she had no fucking clue.

“Why am I not surprised?” Nyx sighed, dragging a hand down the side of his face.

“You wanna know what I’m surprised about?” Crowe said, having to pause for a minute when she pointed a finger and it wasn’t aimed at Nyx before quickly readjusting. “ _Junior_? Seriously? Yeah, he’s a sweet kid and everything, but he’s a walking royal disaster, man… Plus he’s scrawny.”

“True dat,” Libertus hiccupped.

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s what I love about him, sorry if you don’t like it,” Nyx growled defensively.

The both of them paused at that. For a second, Nyx was terrified that they were both about to throw up all over his coffee table. That’s usually what followed that kind of silence. Instead, Libertus swiveled a sloppy grin over towards Crowe.

“He said the L-word.”

“He’s drunk.”

“ _We’re_ drunk.”

It took Crowe a minute to decide that, yeah, there was truth to that statement. As well as truth to Nyx’s statement. It was probably heart-burn that warmed her chest but, nevertheless, she pressed a hand over her heart and went, “Awwww.”

“Please get out of my house,” Nyx hissed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

It wasn’t alcohol that turned his cheeks pink. Crowe and Libertus gravitated over to him like magnets. Nyx stood there with his arms crossed, glaring and blushing at nothing, as the both of them wrapped him up in a congratulatory hug.

“If they try to take your head, I’ll carve out their eyeballs, m’kay?” Crowe promised him in a dreamy mumble.

“Hashtag same,” Libertus said in half a snore.

They’re best friend was in love. Crowe imagined herself standing on top of the bar and screaming that drinks were on her.


	2. execute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis is blackmailed... It's a good effort, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/157916515517/what-if-someone-not-so-nice-discovered-nocts) for an anonymous request.

“Dad’s going to kill me.”

Nyx had never related to that look of crippling despair more. Having been the poster boy for feelings of mortal dread in relation to imagined scenarios of murder and mayhem by the hand of the king, he could empathize.

“Please, if he’s going to kill anyone, he’s probably going to kill me.”

“That is _not_ helping!”

Noctis groaned, hands knotting through his hair and foot tapping incessantly against the floor. A thousand horrible outcomes plagued his pretty, anxiety-raddled head. Honestly, the most surprised Nyx had been when Noctis showed him the message was that he hadn’t gotten one _sooner_. While the net was practically air-tight, the more people that knew a secret, the less easy it was to keep it, no matter how devoted they all were to the cause.

“ _Great taste, Your Highness_ ,” the text from an unknown number said, followed by Nyx’s head-shot for glaive recruitment. “ _Ten million gil if you don’t want to share him with every news outlet in Insomnia.”_

An address and a time followed. Pretty straight-forward scare tactic with no evidence to back it up. More than likely it was just speculation spun into a veiled threat for a pitiful blackmail claim. The Kingsglaive and the Crownsguard had been juggling threats like these since the inception of TV reporting. They took turns every month or so and competed over who could debunk and dissuade the most claims before the month was out.

Nyx didn’t suspect this threat was any different. Although it did bother him that the claimant was crafty enough and confident enough to send this straight to the prince’s personal cell. It was worth another look, if not for that fact than for the fact that Noctis was an utter wreck because of it.

“Come on,” Nyx said, slipping his arm around Noctis’s waist and coaxing him closer to his side. “It’s not as if we were never prepared for something like this happening one day, right?”

“I don’t feel prepared now that it is.” Noctis dragged his hands down his face, growling in frustration. “I don’t get it. We were so damn careful, I tried so hard to be careful…”

“You’re not seriously blaming yourself for this, are you?”

Noctis avoided his gaze, staring down at his hands as they wound fretfully together, knuckles cracking, nails grazing his palms, sweat clamming between the lines on them. Nyx reached around him to press a hand against his wrist, feeling the race of his pulse beneath the skin. He looped his other arm across his chest, effectively caging the prince and casually kissing comforts all along his neck.

“I know you’re freaked, but is it really worth worrying yourself sick over? I mean, so what if the whole world knows? What are they gonna do to us? The media will have a blitzkrieg for a week and then it’ll be old news. We can finally go on a date and get a table in the middle of the room. I can kiss you in the middle of the street and flip off anybody who gags. Seriously, what’s the worst that can happen? We’ve already established that public execution by royal decree is off the table.”

He dragged the back of his hand over his forehead in an over-exaggerated gesture of relief, trying to get Noctis to relax and maybe laugh a little. But the prince remained a bundle of nerves, clutching Nyx’s hand in his and staring at the dimming phone screen upon the coffee table.

“What if this person’s right?” he said, quietly. “What if I just don’t want to share you?”

He cringed at his own words, always nervous to express his wants and desires. He pressed his lips together like he wasn’t going to elaborate, but Nyx could see more words straining to spill past his defenses. Nyx slid a finger against Noctis’s chin, barely pressing to turn his face towards his. Once he was forced to meet Nyx’s stare, it all came rushing out.

“You’re the one thing in the whole world that’s just… _mine_. I didn’t have to ask for you. You weren’t given to me because I did. I had to earn you all on my own, and I just… Once the media gets a hold of you, then you don’t belong to me anymore. You belong to everyone. I guess I just… like having you to myself, I know, that’s such a stupid, selfish thing to say.”

“How many times do I have to tell you how much I hate hearing you say you’re stupid before you stop?”

Noctis closed his eyes for a moment, composing the self-loathing and the stress behind his eye-lids before looking back up at Nyx. His hand turned in Nyx’s, holding onto it like a lifeline to the shores of this ocean of hurt that threatened to swallow him up every day.

“You don’t have to worry,” Nyx assured him. “If we ever decide to let the world know about us, it’ll be on our time. Not theirs.”

“We have three hours,” Noctis reminded him, worrying at his lower lip.

Nyx gave him a wink and a kiss. “Just enough time for me to call in the cavalry.”

* * *

“So in review: Your plan was to blackmail the heir to the oldest kingdom in all of Eos; an heir who has inherited the supernatural devastation of the Crystal, an object of unsurpassed and likely immortal power, that can conjure ancient, ghostly blades from mighty kings long since deceased out of thin air. Your plan was to blackmail this man, _as well_ as the man you’ve alleged that he is romantically involved with. That man being one of the King’s – and this is the King who is also the father of the man you’re attempting to blackmail – favored knights of the Kingsglaive, an elite, black ops unit of individuals personally gifted with the same-said power of this King. Your plan was to blackmail our prince, as well as this glaive, who has spent, I dunno, more than twenty years tempering twin blades with the blood of the King’s enemies and diligently building up his body to the point that he could probably break your neck with his little finger. That about right?”

The blackmailer’s smug grin had turned down the second the bike rolled up and it wasn’t the prince that dismounted it. That scowl turned deeper and weaker and wobblier after every word, cold sweat soaking through his shirt, vision slowly fuzzing, hands uncontrollably shaking.

Crowe clapped a hand on his shoulder and he almost screamed.

“On behalf of the Crown Prince of Lucis and my best friend that’s banging him, we’re flattered by your offer, but must respectfully decline your business.”

Crowe clicked her teeth and gave him a wink. Then climbed back onto her bike and motored away. The man dropped onto his ass and spent the next hour revaluating his own self-worth.


End file.
